Water logged

Maria stood at the edge of the community pool at 11 PM, the water still and black as a wound that wouldn't heal. She'd been swimming for hours, her fingers pruning, trying to outpace the memory of Jacob's voice that morning: 'I think we need to talk.' Those four words had hollowed her out like a rotten pumpkin.

The only other person in the pool area was a teenager in a backward baseball cap, sitting on a deck chair, vaping into the darkness. The red tip of his e-cigarette flared like a dying star.

Maria dove in again. The water swallowed her whole. Sometimes she thought she'd spend her entire life swimming—through this marriage, through this job at the insurance firm where her boss, a man with_zero emotional intelligence, bellowed like a bull every time someone misplaced a file. 'BULLSHIT!' he'd scream, spraying spit across three cubicles. She'd started keeping an extra hat at her desk just to shield her hair from the fallout.

She surfaced, gasping. The vaping kid called out, 'You okay, lady?'

Maria waved him off, treading water. How could she explain that she wasn't okay? That at forty-two, she'd realized her life was something that had happened TO her, not something she'd lived? That the marriage she'd fought for seven years was dissolving like sugar in warm water?

Her phone buzzed on the deck chair. Jacob, probably. Or her boss, demanding something for tomorrow morning. She let it buzz.

The baseball-cap kid was watching her now. 'My grandpa swims when he's stressed,' he said. 'Says it's the only thing that quiets the noise.'

Maria nodded slowly. The water did quiet everything—the bull of a boss, the failing marriage, the existential dread that lived in her chest like a second heart.

She pulled herself toward the pool's edge, water streaming from her hair. The night air was cold against her skin. She grabbed her phone, saw Jacob's text: 'Can we talk? Please.' Below it, a notification: 'Mr. Harrison requested your presence at 7 AM sharp. Don't be late.'

Maria deleted both messages. Then she stood, wrapped her towel around herself like armor, and walked toward the parking lot without looking back. Some water you swim through. Some you drown in. And some you just walk away from.